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Roadside drowsiness test could be around the corner

MARK COLVIN: Could Australian motorists one day face RTTs - Random Tiredness Tests? It's one idea floated today by the lead researcher of the new Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Alertness, Safety and Productivity.

The Federal Government is putting millions of dollars into the centre which will focus on something most of us do every night: sleep. It aims to save the health system billions by significantly reducing the number of fatigue-related injuries.

Simon Lauder reports.

SIMON LAUDER: Most people will spend about a third of their lives asleep, but sleep researchers such as Monash University's Dr Sean Cain say many people underestimate the importance of shut-eye.

SEAN CAIN: More and more people are getting less and less sleep. People have all sorts of other things they want to do - they want to watch a TV show, they want to read email - and there's often a feeling that when you're sleeping you're wasting your time.

But what ends up happening is that you really reduce the quality of your life the next day: you're drowsy, you're less alert, often you're less happy - we know that people who get poor or too little sleep are more prone to mood disorders and depression.

SIMON LAUDER: Twenty-six organisations have come together to form the Cooperative Research Centre for Alertness, Safety and Productivity, which was launched today in Melbourne. The centre will tackle what its leaders call one of the last major barriers to improved human performance.

Research program leader, professor Shantha Rajaratnam, says sleep deprivation or disruption due to shift work harms attention span, decision making, memory and reaction time. It also harms mental and physical health.

SHANTHA RAJARATNAM: This new initiative is aiming to tackle all of the problems, the downstream problems, that occur due to impaired alertness.

We know that safety and productivity are key outcomes that need to be addressed due to impaired alertness. We know that impaired alertness contributes substantially to motor vehicle crashes, injuries, errors in occupational environments as well. So these are the problems we seek to tackle.

SIMON LAUDER: The centre says sleepiness contributes to 10,000 serious workplace injuries and 25,000 serious road crash injuries in Australia, costing the health system $5 billion each year. The centre aims to reduce the number of fatigue related injuries by 9,000 a year.

Professor Rajaratnam says that may involve a new way to keep sleepy drivers off the road.

SHANTHA RAJARATNAM: Law enforcement agencies are waiting for researchers to come up with a biological signal that can then be deployed into a tool that could be used as a roadside test, for example.

So, given that it's widely accepted now that it is not safe to drink and drive, we would argue that it's certainly not safe to be driving in a drowsy state. And to be able to measure that level of drowsiness or alertness is going to be critical to enforcing new policies or laws that come in in that area.

SIMON LAUDER: Professor Rajaratnam says the centre will also be able to improve workplace productivity if it can get workplaces to incorporate best practice into roster systems for shift workers.

SHANTHA RAJARATNAM: There is a gap between current scientific knowledge of this sleep/wake system and work scheduling practices, and so this CRC aims to bridge that gap between current scientific knowledge and work scheduling practices.

SIMON LAUDER: Researcher Dr Sean Cain says the centre will also look at the increasing role of portable devices with screens, such as smartphones.

SEAN CAIN: Because light-emitting devices have become ubiquitous, I think we need much more work to understand the impact.

SIMON LAUDER: Is the solution to change the devices, or change people's behaviour, do you think?

SEAN CAIN: Primarily to change behaviour, to teach people that exposing yourself to bright light at night is a bad thing, but also the devices can be changed as well. Those devices often have very strong blue wavelengths of light in them, and that happens to be the wavelength of light that our biological clocks are most sensitive to. So it's unfortunate that the light that those devices emit have a much greater effect than just standard white light.

SIMON LAUDER: The centre has been given $14.5 million in Federal Government funding over the next seven years. The Government says it expects a better night's sleep will lead to billions of dollars in savings to the health system.